A blog about a busy stay at home Mum of four, with too many dresses and not enough wine!

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MY BLOG

An honest account of being a stay at home Mum of four boys. I hope to blog about the highs and lows, parenting, financial issues, budgeting, depression, panic attacks, weight struggles, weight loss, maintaining a 4st weight loss, funny stories, empty nest syndrome and much more. I would love to hear from all of you ... Thanks for reading!

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Stay at home Mum of four boys.
J aged 18, W aged 15, S aged 11 and T aged 7
Married to P for 15 years
I have a degree in History from the Open University and a Certificate of Higher Education in Hotel and Catering Management from Oxford Brookes.
I have a near on addiction to 50s style dresses, champagne and diet coke. I also love making people laugh, even if it means making a fool of myself in the process ...

success

Having battled my weight for over twenty years, I’m finally hoping I may have conquered it once and for all.That said even if I remain at my current weight for the next twenty years, I’m not sure I will ever stop fighting my inner fat girl. I’m an addict in plain terms and an addiction to food is not an easy one to admit too. People often assume that an overeater is simply greedy and are unaware of the often complex emotional issues involved. Don’t get me wrong, for me, there is definitely greed involved as well. I LOVE MY FOOD! That said, I admit that I often use it as an emotional crutch as well. If I’m feeling sad or depressed I comfort eat and conversely even if I’m as happy as Larry. (Larry most definitely did not have weight issues, or he wouldn’t so happy all of the time!) I will celebrate with a nice big cream cake. So I’m well aware that my weight struggles are probably a lifelong battle.

Fortunately things have got a little easier after losing over four stone in weight. Life still has it’s many and varied ups and downs, but on the whole I do feel a lot better about myself. I am no longer depressed about the way I look and it really does make me happy to fit into size 14 clothes. That may make me seem a little shallow, but it’s something I have strived to achieve for a very long time and I want to enjoy my small victory. I really do hope that this time, I will manage to keep the weight off.

I’m hoping one of the main reasons, will be because I have done everything a little bit differently this time around. I’m a bit of a diet veteran, you name it and I have probably tried it. From Atkins to Weight Watchers, the Rotation diet to Slim Fast shakes and everything in between. I’ve even tried prescription pills, those marvellous little pills also known as Orlistat. Actually I’m being highly sarcastic when I use the word marvellous, because despite two months of regular pill taking and strict adherence to a low fat diet, guess how much weight I lost? Well it certainly wasn’t the promised 1-2lbs a week, nope it was zero! All that effort and dicing with the most unpleasant side effects, I’ll let you Google those …. Suffice to say I would NOT recommend those pills to anyone.

I’ve even invented my own diets, perhaps the least successful being the Mint Diet. I was probably around 17 and finding it hard to give up on sweet treats. So in my infinite wisdom I thought, why give them up at all? Why not just give up every other food group instead?! So I did, I carefully measured out 800 calories worth of Murray Mints and 400 calories of Imperial mints. Divided all of the mints into three ‘meals’ and that’s all I ate(!) You probably won’t be surprised to learn that after 36 hours and with a huge headache, I ran screaming to the nearest McDonalds. Not my finest dieting moment. It did however, teach me something, although it took over twenty years for me to figure it out.

I had it a little bit right with the sweets, because every time I have denied myself something, I would fall off of the dieting wagon and right back into overeating again. So it was time to try a diet that didn’t exclude any of the major food groups, but did include a small amount of whatever I was craving. For a long time it was Magnum ice creams, the basic ones are around 270 cals each. So I ate one every single day on my diet, until I got fed up and switched to a small piece of chocolate fudge cake. I also LOVE Kettle Chips or Tyrrells crisps, so I would eat a quarter bag of the sharing bag size every day. Not very healthy but then weighing 15.7 stone was even less healthy.

So I stuck to 1500 cals every day and included treats. I also took into account my inner greedy girl and ate little and often. That way I never went too long without eating and for a little piggy that’s always a good thing! I learnt from the Orlistat pills that I needed to shock my body into losing weight. It’s a sad fact that your body actually battles to keep you at a certain weight. Great if you weigh 10st not so great when you weigh a lot more! So I decided to exercise. It probably won’t come as a surprise for you to learn that I previously viewed exercise as diets’ evil twin brother. That said it was marginally less evil, I knew I would rather exercise than give up my Magnum every day. So I went to the gym five days a week for an hour of really intense cardio exercise. I researched everything I could, about the best way to lose weight through exercise. I wouldn’t allow myself to miss out a certain machine, even if I hated it – yes I’m talking about you Mr Treadmill. In short I worked my rather large butt off.

I wouldn’t leave the gym unless I was tomato red in the face (sometimes even a fetching shade of purple) and sweating profusely. I was too shy to attend gym classes, I didn’t want to be the big girl who couldn’t keep up with anyone. Until one day a lovely fitness trainer told me to stop being so silly and attend a half hour spin class. The studio was dark and I could hide away in the corner and because after three months I had lost a stone and a half I finally felt confident enough to give it a go …..

This isn’t the end of my weight loss story, but I’m approaching 1000 words and don’t want to bore anyone too much. So I will post again in the not too distant future. I’m not vain enough to think that my story is particularly unusual or exciting enough to be of interest to many people, but I hope someone might find it a help. I also took great inspiration from other dieters, whilst on my diet and hopefully someone might find this useful. If there is one thing I regret about this diet, it’s that I didn’t do it a long time ago.

Being a stay at home Mum has had a massive impact on my weight. I’m a greedy girl and was struggling with my weight before I had children, but never went above size 16. After having children, food was always around and became a treat/reward to terrible effect.

Two and a half years ago I wrote the following post:

To diet or not to diet? That is the question….. I guess the answer, unfortunately is diet! My recent diagnosis of a non alcoholic fatty liver, is making me feel it’s time to shift a few pounds, or preferably a few stone! I have been battling my weight for well over 20 years now. I would like to say that it is post baby weight, that stuck around; but that would make me a big fat fibber. Since my late teens, my love of food and a greedy nature, has meant I have been on what feels like a permanent diet. Not a very successful one, or there would be no need for this post. I have been all the dress sizes under the sun, from a size 22 at my biggest to a 14 at my smallest and hit every size in-between more than once….

I have just returned from a two-week holiday in Devon, where I probably ate enough to gain a fatty kidney! (NB not sure if a fatty kidney is something that is likely or not? But who knew a liver could be fat?) Anyway it is now day 2 of my diet and I am officially STARVING! I am addicted to watching Living TVs ‘The Biggest Loser’ and have decided that a low-calorie diet and lots of exercise is the way to go. I find it extremely inspiring that the guys and gals on this program, can lose serious amounts of weight in such a short space of time. And yes I am hoping it will work for me too (!)

The only one thing that seriously bugs me about the show, is the fact that none of the contestants ever moan that they are hungry. Sadly for my husband, that is all I have done for the last 36 hours of this diet. I am so hungry that it is a good job that the kids are back at school tomorrow or I might just eat one of them! So here we go guys, what shall we say 2 stone in 2 months or is the hunger making me a tad delirious?! Will keep you posted ……

Blogging is a wonderful way to look back at your life and I’m delighted to say that amazingly, my diet was a success and for once I did indeed lose the weight! It took me a year to shed nearly five stone and a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the way. I have also managed to keep most of the weight off for the last eighteen months. Due to ill health and the ever soaring cost of gym memberships. I have stopped going to the gym and exercising daily. I’m hoping to get back into exercising because it really was an amazing weight loss tool and I couldn’t recommend it more. It also has a lot of obvious health benefits too.

Since I have been maintaining my weight loss I think I have probably gained around a half a stone, mainly from stopping exercising. I couldn’t say for definite because I have thrown away my bathroom scales! I still can’t quite believe that I have no clue what I weigh, at a guess I would go for around the 11 stone mark and as I started at 15.7 stone I’m delighted with that number. That said I threw away the scales because I no longer want my life to be ruled by that set of numbers. You know the ones, that stare up accusingly at you and ALWAYS make you feel bad. Instead I rely on my clothes size to keep me on the straight and narrow. I have dresses in a size 12 if they have stretch, but without the stretch, it’s a size 14 for me. Having been a size 22, I’m pretty happy with a 14. Actually that’s an understatement, I’m EXTREMELY happy!

Usually I pile all the weight straight back on, so I’m pleased that so far I have kept the weight off. There is still a very greedy girl inside of me. I think, or rather I know, if I deprived her of all delicious treats she would win the battle. I would end up eating a mountain of forbidden foods, just to keep her quiet. This way, we are both happy, I realise that too many people a size 14 is not slim. To me it’s amazing, a testament to finally conquering my demons and loving my curves. In my next post I will blog about how I lost the weight.